


Red

by Rainyhart



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 07:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8835655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainyhart/pseuds/Rainyhart
Summary: Three times Carl hated Negan, and one time he didn't.





	

When Carl first lays eyes on Negan, it’s hard for him to see anything but red. 

Red as the color of the scarf wrapped neatly around Negan’s neck, as an accessory or for the chill of the night air Carl can’t be sure. 

Red as the color of the blood smeared across almost every surface of dirt beneath him. Splatters and puddles and chunks of it everywhere he looks from the deaths of the people he considered family. 

Red as the rage he feels while he has to watch Negan stride among everyone, bat swinging and pointing and bashing as he laughs and snarls and shouts over top the screams from everyone around him. 

By mid morning he’s gone, ordering his group of saviors after him. Everything still and quiet in the absence of the chaos that just happened, there are silent tears fueled by shock shared by them all and Carl knows what’s ahead isn’t going to be easy.

Nothing can be, any more. 

-

Things aren’t different the second time they meet. 

Carl watches as the saviors bring their trucks into Alexandria. He watches as they divide and begin to work their way through the houses of his neighbors, then his, but he’s on his feet in an instant when he sees how much of everything they’re gathering to take. 

A looming presence fills in beside him the second he orders them to put some of what they had taken back, and when he’s questioned all that red from before comes right back. 

For a moment Carl keeps his gun on Negan’s men anyway, but he isn’t looking at them. There’s a challenge present in Negan’s expression over the refusal to fall in line that Carl can’t seem to want to stop glaring at, and a part of him wants to see how long they could keep this up. It’s then, however, that he remembers his dad’s presence in the room nearby, and quickly after, the fact that if he refuses another person’s life could be lost. 

In a moment of extreme reluctance he lowers the gun, doesn’t bother looking at Negan anymore, and vows. 

Next time will be different. 

-

It isn’t until he sneaks into the Sanctuary that he realizes. Guns firing at Negan’s men with the full intention of fighting until he could get to Negan himself. Find him, and then kill him too. The first of his men go down, and that’s when Negan appears. The glint of unbreakable confidence ever present in his eyes as he saunters into view, locked tightly with Carl’s own, and Carl has to grip the gun tighter to keep it from slipping between his fingers. 

This is his shot. He could shoot Negan right here, and not have to worry about going home to give anything else up. No one else would have to die from him. It could all be over the second he pulls the trigger. 

In the time he takes to process this however, another of Negan’s men moves in and Carl shoots him then, instead. The result of this is Carl being tackled to the ground before he can get to anyone else, gun on him until he’s removed of his weapons, and then Negan is above him, offering him a hand up along with a tour of the Sanctuary.

Everything feels off, after that. 

Negan explains how things work at the Sanctuary, he shows Carl his wives and makes him remove the bandage over his socket to sing him a song, but he doesn’t kill him. 

When Carl asks this later as he sits across from Negan, strangely enough, he doesn’t get a straight answer. 

Thankfully Negan doesn’t ask him back, because Carl isn’t sure he has one either.

-

That afternoon Carl sits with Negan on his porch, contemplative. 

Judith is in Negan’s lap, Lucille betwen them, and it’s warmed up exceptionally outside, hardly a gentle breeze present. 

The rumble of Negan’s voice breaks the silence when he says something about killing him, killing his dad and moving into the suburbs, but the comment has no value.

After watching Negan wiggle his toes in their carpet and find joy in the running water of a sink it’s empty, almost. 

In comparison to how Carl saw him the first time they met it makes Negan seem human, even, and when he looks at him the red has faded to a neutral grey, no longer the same rage filled blood thirst he had just earlier today. 

But he won’t say that out loud.

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr: http://rainyhart.tumblr.com/post/154383697345/when-carl-first-lays-eyes-on-negan-its-hard-for


End file.
